Sequestration Killing Jobs for Veterans

Approximately 300,000 active duty service members and more than 100,000 National Guardsmen and reservists transition back into civilian life each year. More than 13,000 of those men and women choose to re-enter civilian life in Washington and over 50 percent of those 13,000 transition through Joint Base Lewis-McChord.

Washington has historically welcomed Veterans and their families with open arms but in doing so it led to unacceptably high unemployment rates for veterans in our state and subsequently high unemployment costs for JBLM. These two factors were a driving force behind Senator Murray’s “VOW to Hire Heroes Act (VOW) that was signed into law by President Obama in 2011.

The bottom line goal of VOW was to drive down the unemployment rate among our nation’s veterans not only in Washington State but throughout the country. And early numbers suggested it was beginning to work – until sequestration.

According to the Huffington Post, “A non-partisan study has concluded that as many as 1.6 million new jobs could be added to the U.S. economy if Congress simply canceled the budget cuts implemented due to sequestration from August 1, 2013, to the end of September 2014.”

Our Veterans make up a number of those individuals seeking jobs.

The study, which was compiled by the Congressional Budget Office at the behest of House Budget Committee ranking member Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), looked at the practical impacts of repealing sequestration from now through the end of fiscal year 2014.

Of course, not everything in the study was positive. Ted Dewalt, president of VetJobs, highlighted from the study that, “Suspending sequestration would cost the government $14 billion in fiscal year 2013 and $90 billion in fiscal year 2014.” He went on to share that, according to the CBO, the additional debt could “diminish policymakers’ ability to use tax and spending policies to respond to unexpected future challenges.” It could also heighten borrowing costs for the government down the road.

But sequestration has also had a negative effect on the nation’s unemployment situation, the study concluded. And a year-long vacation from the policy — which calls for $1 trillion in cuts over the next 10 years — could result in a nice economic jolt. The CBO estimated that as a worst-case scenario, the U.S. economy would add 300,000 jobs if sequestration was canceled during the period examined. The cancelation would also result in an uptick of gross domestic product by 0.7 percent and an increase in the employment level by 0.9 million by the third quarter of calendar year 2014.

So what exactly is the right approach? It seems the very measure we took to control budget spending is causing an increase in agency unemployment insurance costs and delays in hiring our nation’s heroes. Yet, to suspend sequestration would also increase our government costs.

Bottom line: investing in people adds long-term value and VOW calls for improved education and training. Yet, we don’t necessarily have the training matched up with the available jobs. The “next-step” is adding jobs that our veterans could actively fill – preferably not multiple part-time jobs that undervalue their skills, abilities, and training.